03-11-2007, 12:09 PM
Quote:While we're on the topic, did the ancient Greeks really paint their opponents as inhuman? Or was that just a modern treat by the author of the comic book?The Greeks did: in the Politics, Aristotle said Asians were "slaves by nature" and according to Plutarch, he gave Alexander the sound advise to treat Macedonians and Greeks as human beings and the Asians as plants. This attitude is NOT in Herodotus, by the way.
What Miller does, is comparable but different: his Persians are effeminate (they use perfume etc.), cowardly, religious obscurantists (the "god" Xerxes), and black. Now personally I would love to be black (I hate my pale white skin), but in this context, I think the blackness of the Persians is intended to show them as degenerate. None of this is in the Greek sources.
Perhaps this review of the comic book is illuminating (although written in Dutch).
